First of all, ask around you, "Who invented radio?". The reply is usually "Marconi." For our parents and grandparents, the inventor of radio is, according to all the history books, Guglielmo Marconi.

When the beginnings of the wireless telegraphy are evoked, the names of Maxwell, Hertz, Popov, Lodge, Branly and Marconi are generally the first which come to mind. But who knows Oleg V. Losev, Jangadish S. Bose or Mahlon Loomis? Although ignored, theirs works and theirs discoveries however make of them pioneers of the Radio.
Let us now take a trip back into the past.

In October 1866 Mahlon Loomis successfully demonstrated what he called "wireless telegraphy" by Kites. It’s the first known instance of wireless aerial communication.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 129,971, dated July 30, 1872.

Be it known that I, MAHLON LOOMIS, dentist, of Washington, District of Columbia, have invented or discovered a new and improved Mode of Telegraphing and of Generating Light, Heat, and Motive-Power; and I do hereby declare that the following is a full description thereof.

The nature of my invention or discovery consists, in general terms, of utilizing natural electricity and establishing an electrical current or circuit for telegraphic and other purposes without the aid of wires, artificial batteries, or cables to form such electrical circuit, and yet communicate from one continent of the globe to another.

Jagdish C. Bose is a physicist and Indian botanist and a pioneer of the radio. In 1895, C. Bose made a public demonstration of the utility of the radio waves, by activing from afar the ringing of a bell and the explosion of a small gunpowder charge. It’s only two years later that G. Marconi will make a public experiment of radio contact which will become famous.

Guglielmo Marconi first conducted demonstrations on Salisbury Plain in September 1896, in front of GPO, Army and Admiralty Officials. In March 1897 and during a demonstration, ranges of up to four and a half miles were recorded. In these tests Marconi discarded the reflectors he had been using in favour of wires kept aloft by kites or balloons.